20th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 38:4–6, 8–10
Psalm 40:2, 3, 4, 18
Hebrews 12:1–4
Luke 12:49–53
God’s plan for us is not about the accomplishment of our self-interest. Although God uses rulers and nations for His purposes, He never charts their course according to a short-term gain.
God does not worry about whether He is “popular.” Instead, He allows those who work for Him to bear their difficulties as best they can, supplying the strength they need to persevere. The Scriptures give many examples of God’s servants who do not find things easy.
Jeremiah ends up in an empty well. It could have been an inglorious end. However, having been told about the prophet’s plight by a servant, the king did not let him die of hunger there. He sent his servant to draw the prophet out of the well.
Thus, Jeremiah was free to continue to prophesy in the name of God and to let the people know the “bad news” that had to be accepted before Good News could be announced.
Most of the kings identified in the Bible are described as incompetent and unfaithful. In the account from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, Zedekiah is represented as a king who wanted to do the right thing but who caved in when the influential people around him did not agree. Yet in his own imperfect way, he served to permit God’s Word to be proclaimed.
Having incompetent rulers makes things hard for us, but they cannot impede the plan of God. When we “put our trust in princes,” we are doomed to be disappointed. But God is with us, and He strengthens us on our journey.
The Gospel this weekend presents a moment when Jesus shares a deeply felt anguish with His disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”
That fire will cause division. That fire directs us to the truth that must be acknowledged, that our earthly attachments, including attachment to persons, are secondary. God has the prior right in our lives. When we are committed to God, we will inevitably discover that all other relationships are compromised. Division comes, but we can rise above it.
The Letter to the Hebrews invites us to keep our eyes fixed on God’s plan, aware of the “cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us, those who have gone before us in the life of faith. It calls us to “rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”
With subtle humor, Hebrews hints as to what can be expected when the decision to follow the example of Jesus has been made. “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.”
We live in a world that often rejects God because of the “problem of evil.” The fact of human suffering, especially senseless suffering and the suffering of the innocent, leads to a rejection of belief in a “good God.”
Ironically, this rejection often creates a greater suffering on the part of those who choose to pursue their unenlightened self-interest rather than to accept suffering in freedom, open to the love of God that offers strength for endurance.
We are called to do all we can to lift the suffering of others. When it becomes clear, however, that the fire that surrounds us is blazing so that it cannot be put out, we must choose to persevere, confident of the power of God to bring good out of evil and to enable us to persevere.
The first Christian virtue that the world notices is patient endurance. We understand that “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” But it is always fitting to cry out with the psalmist: “Lord, come to my aid!”